


Eldritch Rooms

by parallelmonsoon



Series: Eldritch Rooms [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Experimental Style, Gen, eldritch concepts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26033968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelmonsoon/pseuds/parallelmonsoon
Summary: Connected to Mind the Gap.  Various headcanons for the sides' rooms with an eldritch twist.  Let's just say Thomas really shouldn't go exploring inside his own head without a tour guide.
Series: Eldritch Rooms [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1889764
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	Eldritch Rooms

**Author's Note:**

> Not a coherent story as much as a series of impressions and notes. This first chapter is the basic idea for the rooms

Patton’s room is the roach motel of the mindscape. The room evokes memories, but it also returns the emotions attached to those memories with perfect fidelity.

So let’s say Thomas is in the room and picks up a scrap of wrapping paper. It makes him remember a Christmas during his early childhood when he got the perfect gift- a SNES. Normally with nostalgia we *remember* but do not *experience* emotions…we’re one step removed. We *remember* that we were happy and giddy and nervous and shocked, and we feel *new* emotions in the present…we feel comfort and joy at the memory of our past happiness. In Patton’s room Thomas experiences the *old* emotion all over again, exactly as he did on that long ago day. That’s dangerous because it means you can keep yourself inside your happiest moment indefinitely. It’s a happiness that never becomes a memory, and that is addicting in the worst way. It works for other emotions as well, but sorrow or anger or other ‘negative’ emotions tend to be a little easier to pull away from. 

For Patton, he lives in the center of every emotion Thomas has ever had. In his room he’s experiencing those emotions again, just as he did when they happened, simultaneously and always. Much like Logan remembers everything Thomas has learned. And like Logan, every emotional beat has the same significance to him. Remember that Patton is not human, so this perception is normal for him. He IS the emotions, and with every moment of Thomas’ life Patton is adding to himself and becoming more complex and nuanced. 

* * *

In Virgil’s room the perception of time is altered. Virgil lives in the stretched out, blink-fast seconds before disaster strikes. 

He lives in that forever space just after you lose your balance but before you fall. The fall itself is inevitable and you know it, but you have just enough time to consider *how best* to take the impact. There is clarity in that moment, but it is also the moment when the panic is purest. All reflex, the dumb, animal horror of the body alone. It’s the moment when you think ‘this is going to happen’ and the same time it already *is* happening and also it’s over and there you are on the floor, bruised and aching and already forgetting the shock of it all.

What this means for Virgil is that he can see the countless possibilities for every action that Thomas is about to take. But unlike, Logan, who sees every missed opportunity along the way, Virgil sees clearest only in that narrow, narrow space just before a choice is made. The not-quite-now, the tipping point just as gravity starts to assert itself. And like the others, every possibility holds equal significance for him. The likelihood that in falling Thomas will land just so and snap his spine and the likelihood that he will merely stub his toe are both equally plausible to Virgil. 

For Thomas, being in Virgil’s room erases his time sense…or rather, it restores it. For humans, time is malleable. It seems to run slower when we’re bored, faster when we’re excited. We mark time by our next smoke break or how long it takes to drive to the theater or when we’re due to take our next pill. We’re aware of it passing, of course, but that awareness ebbs and flows. 

In Virgil’s room, Thomas is excruciatingly aware of every tick of the clock. Now. Now. Now. So many nows, and with that awareness comes the crushing knowledge that those nows are finite. Someday they will run out, and here in the now the nows are passing and now another and another and-

-Thomas never lingers for long in Virgil’s room.

* * *

Logan remembers *everything* that Thomas has ever learned *and* views it all as equal. As humans we mentally file things as more or less important. We need to rank and filter to function, but for Logan everything is a priority. He sees the cascade of events that would result from a choice like wedding vs. callback, but also the cascade from the shirt Thomas chooses to wear in the morning. Both are significant to him. 

He also sees every path not taken, all the might have beens of Thomas' life. His room is like a Jacob's ladder, a stack that tumbles and clatters and starts anew with every choice. 

Thomas experiences it as a place of blinding light and no shadows. Every wasted moment stretches out before him and his future stretches out behind, a twisting fractal of terrible beauty. 

* * *

To explain Roman and Remus’ room, we first need to do a little thought exercise.

Imagine a metal baseball bat. Imagine yourself holding it. Swinging it. Hitting a ball.

Imagine a horse. Imagine the horse with a saddle and bridle. Imagine yourself riding it. Imagine the horse jumping over a fence.

Now…while you were imagining the horse, what happened to the bat? 

You probably stopped imagining it, right? But you’re imagining it again now, aren’t you?

How clear was the picture for both of them? Did you imagine every scruff and scrape on the bat? The electrical tape around the handle? Did you imagine a bat you once used yourself? 

How about the horse? Did you imagine his flexing muscles? The flaring of his nostrils? The dust puffing up around his hooves?

Remus and Roman’s room is one of flux. It’s a rainbow sea. Primordial, the stuff of creation. Things form and dissolve and shift and *become*. Simple, familiar things are easiest. Safest. Even if Roman can’t quite picture a photo-realistic baseball bat, a vague bat shape is still recognizable as a bat. A crude child’s drawing approximation, but it gets the job done (the job being to communicate its essential batness.)

The more complex, the harder it is to hold the whole of it. And it’s so easy to break focus. To start off with the bat and move on to the horse. Until something brings the bat to mind again, and the horse…

The horse remains. *Everything* remains. Everything sinks back into the sea and is remixed and reused and lives on. Much of it is harmless enough. Little wisps, ghostly imaginings that stuttered and died stillborn. 

But sometimes the things we imagine take on a life of their own. They find their way again and again to the surface. They live inside of us even when we try to avert our eyes.

The dragon witch is not a dragon that wears a witch’s hat. She is not a witch that can change into a dragon. She is a thing of coils and humps. She is eyes and wings and chattering jaws. She gnashes and writhes and chants with a thousand slathering tongues. They created her when they were small. Their child, but she is her own, now, and growing ever larger.

The brothers share their room. There is push and pull between them. What one makes the other changes. The horse tosses its majestic mane and cuts a caper. It’s skin sloughs from its hide. It sprouts glorious white wings and a golden horn. It whips its scorpion’s tail. 

But sometimes…rarely…there is calm. The brothers work together. They *agree*, and when that happens the ever rushing sea grows still. But even (even then!) there are things in the depths. Things that swim sinuous and glow with a pale, terrible light. 

For Thomas, the room is unbridled creation. The brothers have some level of control. The horse may change, may grow monstrous or beautiful, but it is still a horse until they let it sink away. But let Thomas start with a horse…

He thinks of a horse. It’s a poorly formed thing, but there’s enough horseness to it to pass. But as he thinks of a horse he thinks also of hay. Now the horse has a hay mane, a hay tail. Bristly straw. Thomas thinks of the hay rides of his youth and how the stiff stalks would poke him. The horse is now a wagon (and also a horse). The wheels are lined with hooves. The body is hollowed out and filled with bales. Hay rides make him think of Halloween and jack-o-lanterns. The horse has a gash cut grin and eyes that glow from within. Thomas thinks of bonfires on the beach. The horse screams as it burns. 


End file.
